


(More of) a Life

by Miladygrey



Category: Blade Runner (1982)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:10:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miladygrey/pseuds/Miladygrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But this feels real. You feel real, skin warm and mouth hot, taste like sweat and copper and whatever you're drinking, and God help me, this hurts but I'll take it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(More of) a Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for elynrae in the 2005 Yuletide NYR Challenge under the name Lady Grey.
> 
> A lot of people view Deckard and Rachael's relationship as non-consensual. I don't. If that scene in the movie bothers or triggers you, you probably will not like this fic.

_"Say `kiss me`."_

_"I can't...rely on my memories..."_

_"Say `kiss me'."_

How can I kiss you? How can I--anything, past pangs of grief, and I didn't learn that in all the years of school and university and reading that my brain insists on remembering, it was planted in my head four (?) years ago. I'm a _replicant_. Past pangs of grief. Can I feel grief? Can I feel? I'm the business, I'm a skin job, am I anything?

I don't even know why I found and followed you. You called, I saw your face on the `phone, hated it. Liar and truth-teller both at once, how dare you devolve me? How dare you take my world and shake it up like a snowglobe, making a new pattern I never wanted or asked for? But there was nothing left for me in my apartment. None of it was mine. Someone else's life, their memories. Spiders and playing doctor and piano lessons. I knew you were real. It could be verified that I had spoken to you, and you to me. So I cling to reality, as hurtful as it is.

I feel you. Feel your body, every inch hard, hands in my hair and mouth bruising mine. Imposed on me from outside, does that make it more real? You're human, Deckard, therefore what you do is real and true, while what I do is a feeble machine's effort at a life. I can play the songs on your piano, smile at the old photos, but my reactions mean nothing, because I am (in the eyes of almost everyone) nothing. When I didn't know what I was, was I more real?

But this feels real. You feel real, skin warm and mouth hot, taste like sweat and copper and whatever you're drinking, and God help me, this hurts but I'll take it. Warmth, sweat, blood and harsh lips all equal _human_. Pain equals human.

_"Kiss me."_

Your face changed when I said that--was it what you wanted to hear? I can't read you, Deckard--maybe I'm too close, breathing your breath and drunk on the alcohol in your mouth. Zebra-stripes from the blinds across your body, stippling skin and glancing light from your eyes. Am I allowed to look? What do I look like to you? Did you know from the start, some Blade Runner sixth sense, or did it take all those questions and that horrible machine to tell you that I was only skin and nothing more? Does it matter?

I had to keep my hair pinned back and out of my face at work, Mr. Tyrell insisted. Too many fine shining wires, sensitive to the slightest shift. The brush of a fallen hair could destroy them. So I am sleek and fine, walking proudly across the immaculate floors, laughing inside at your battered coat and coarseness. Except I have no inside to laugh in. Voices carry in those shining halls--"How can it not know what it is?" And I am suddenly down to your level and even below it, ragged coarse human trumps neat-and-clean replicant anywhere, any world.

Now I am unpinned for you, hair a waterfall of curls to hide my face (is this my face? Do I look like someone Tyrell loved, perhaps?), coat off and gun put aside so you can feel me shudder. It feels different, loose and strange and flushed. I've never been flushed, never felt my cheeks go red or my breath catch. I thought it was because I was collected, not easily embarrassed. Mr. Tyrell complimented me on my professionalism. Except it's not, it's because I _couldn't_ feel, and didn't know it.

_"I want you."_

If you love me, want me, despite knowing what I am (and you know more about what I am than I do; Tyrell told me nothing, cast me outcast unclean from his sundimmed office and let me walk home all broken in my fine fur coat), then I think I love you too. For not letting me think too much, for making my focus go blurry and for these _sensations._ Things jumbled and immediate and all at once, your mouth leaving red marks on my neck and down to my breasts, and I would do the same for you if I could only _think_. All my thoughts are shattered down into hands on my body and the blinds' faint scratching against my back and flickers of light, oh let there be light.

_"I want you."_

I do. I want to compare and contrast, now that I know there's a difference. My skin is white, yours is tanned, do you get to walk in the sun, doing your job? I want the stories behind all these scars, after I kiss them (and maybe make one of my own, to prove that I was here, that I _was_ ). Do I feel any different from a human woman? Or do you know? I know what fifty percent of female replicants are used for. My lips are burning and half-numb, taste like smoke and drunkenness. Harder. More.

_"Again."_

_"I want you."_

Because if all this is true (and it is), if I am a replicant and can measure out my life in coffee spoons and a few short years, then you are my death. You're making me feel. When replicants start feeling emotion, that means they're dying. A few months at best, a week at worst, and the last feeling is pain. Blackened nails and stiffening joints, body's beauty edging into betrayal. I saw one die once, poor maid's model returned in her last days so her "family" wouldn't have to watch her deteriorate, and felt pity. Now it's returned to me threefold. If this is pain, I'll take it. Maybe I'll learn in my remaining time to love pain as pleasure. Then dying won't hurt, I'll welcome it. Make death love me, Deckard.

_"Put your hands on me."_

So give me some life, Deckard. Whatever you've got, give it to me. Give me your life. If I'm feeling for the first time, then I'll take it all.


End file.
